Over 330mn abortions in China in 40 years of one-child policy - ministry

More than 330 million abortions and almost 200 million sterilizations have been performed in China since family-planning policies to limit the population were introduced 40 years ago, the country’s Health Ministry has revealed.

Measures to encourage fewer children in China were introduced in
the 1970s, including the one-child rule. The goal behind the
policies was to minimize population growth to save resources, such
as food and water.

Data also revealed that the government has done more than a
half-billion birth control procedures, including the mandatory
insertion of some 403 million of intra-uterine devices – a practice
considered a regular birth control procedure in the West, if chosen
voluntarily – the Financial Times reported.

China’s Science and Research Institute blames a lack of sex
education for the high number of abortions, stating that less than
10 percent of couples use condoms on a regular basis.

The one-child policy prevents urban families from having more
than one child. Exemptions apply to twins, rural couples, ethnic
minorities and couples who are both minors. The rule is currently
being criticized in China for decreasing the country’s
population.

China currently has a population of 1.3 billion. Chinese doctors
have performed 8.2 million abortions annually for the past 40 years
– enough to re-populate London, UK, 40 times.

For the first time in 40 years, China’s younger labor force
dropped last year, which economists warn can be devastating for a
developing country. “This makes China’s population look more
like a developed country than a developing one, which is a key
disadvantage in labor-intensive industries,” economist Ken Peng
told the Financial Times.

Former vice minister at the Health Ministry Huang Jiefu argued
that a new “family-planning policy” must be found “to fit
with the times,” the International Business Times reported.

The new Chinese President Xi Jinping is pursuing such a policy
by merging the National Population and Family-Planning Commission
with the Health Ministry, which could trigger a move away from the
country's restrictive birth-control policies.

"Where else in the world can you find a family-planning
bureau? It was quite appropriate to fold it into the [Health]
Ministry,” Huang added.

An expert demographer believes that the merger will reduce the
power of the family-planning commission: “It won’t have the
ability to design policies and it will have less say in the
country’s population strategy,” He Yafu told the Financial
Times.

Population control has also affected gender ratios in China,
with parents preferring males and selectively aborting female
fetuses, leading to an imbalance of 34 million more men than
women.

According to He, a relaxed policy may be introduced nationwide,
allowing two parents who are single children themselves, to have
two kids. This rule has already been implemented in some
cities across the country on a trial basis.

The country has generally supported the one-child policy in the
past. Three in four citizens believe that without it, the country’s
population would be 30 percent higher at 1.7 billion not 1.3
billion, which would have drained the nation's resources, according
to 2008 Pew Research Center survey.